Wednesday, August 19, 2015

China’s New Motorway is Built Over Water

China has opened a new stretch of road that connects Xingshang County
to the Zhaojun Bridge in central China’s Hubei province. A 4-km-long
section of the 10-km route is built on top of an elevated bridge that
runs along the middle of a river valley. The new route will cut down
travel time from Xingshan to the Yiba Expressway to just 20 minutes, and
at the same time treat drivers to a spectacular scenery. The journey
originally took close to an hour along a steep and convoluted road.
According
to the project manager of the road Chen Xingda, when the motorway was
first proposed in 2013, there were three different possible routes. Two
of the routes involved digging a tunnel through the mountains in the
area. The third was a longer route and involved building on water.
Engineers on the project chose the third option because that would
enable them to protect the abundance of plants and woodland in the
mountains. Those involved in the project claim this to be China’s first
“ecological overwater road”. The overwater highway cost about 2 million
yuan (US$320,000) to construct which was nearly half of the 4.4 million
yuan ($700,000) it cost to build the entire thing.